Search results for ""Author Sam Harris""

"Civilization rests on a series of successful conversations." Sam HarrisNeuroscientist, philosopher, podcaster and bestselling author Sam Harris, has been exploring some of the greatest questions concerning the human mind, society, and the events that shape our world.Harris's search for deeper understanding of how we think has led him to engage and exchange with some of our most brilliant and controversial contemporary minds - Daniel Kahneman, Robert Sapolsky, Anil Seth and Max Tegmark - in order to unpack and clarify ideas of consciousness, free will, extremism, and ethical living.For Harris, honest conversation, no matter how difficult or contentious, represents the only path to moral and intellectual progress.Featuring eleven conversations from the hit podcast, these electric exchanges fuse wisdom with rigorous interrogation to shine a light on what it means to make sense of our world today.'I don't have many can't miss podcasts, but Making Sense is right at the top of that short list.' - Stephen Fry'Sam Harris is the most intellectually courageous man I know.' - Richard Dawkins

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This important and timely book delivers a startling analysis of the clash of faith and reason in today's world. Sam Harris offers a vivid historical tour of mankind's willingness to suspend reason in favour of religious beliefs, even when those beliefs are used to justify harmful behaviour and sometimes heinous crimes. He asserts that in the shadow of weapons of mass destruction, we can no longer tolerate views that pit one true god against another. Most controversially, he argues that we cannot afford moderate lip service to religion -- an accommodation that only blinds us to the real perils of fundamentalism. While warning against the encroachment of organised religion into world politics, Harris also draws on new evidence from neuroscience and insights from philosophy to explore spirituality as a biological, brain-based need. He calls on us to invoke that need in taking a secular humanistic approach to solving the problems of this world.

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Sam Harris's first book, The End of Faith, ignited a worldwide debate about the validity of religion. In the aftermath, Harris discovered that most people - from religious fundamentalists to nonbelieving scientists - agree on one point: science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Indeed, our failure to address questions of meaning and morality through science has now become the primary justification for religious faith.In this highly controversial book, Sam Harris seeks to link morality to the rest of human knowledge. Defining morality in terms of human and animal well-being, Harris argues that science can do more than tell how we are; it can, in principle, tell us how we ought to be. In his view, moral relativism is simply false - and comes at an increasing cost to humanity. And the intrusions of religion into the sphere of human values can be finally repelled: for just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim morality. Using his expertise in philosophy and neuroscience, along with his experience on the front lines of our 'culture wars', Harris delivers a game-changing book about the future of science and about the real basis of human cooperation.

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In The End of Faith, Sam Harris delivers a startling analysis of the clash between reason and religion in the modern world. He offers a vivid, historical tour of our willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs—even when these beliefs inspire the worst human atrocities. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris draws on insights from neuroscience, philosophy, and Eastern mysticism to deliver a call for a truly modern foundation for ethics and spirituality that is both secular and humanistic. Winner of the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction.

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The physiologist Benjamin Libet famously demonstrated that activity in the brain's motor regions can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move. Another lab recently used fMRI data to show that some "conscious" decisions can be predicted up to 10 seconds before they enter awareness (long before the preparatory motor activity detected by Libet). Clearly, findings of this kind are difficult to reconcile with the sense that one is the conscious source of one's actions. The question of free will is no mere curio of philosophy seminars. A belief in free will underwrites both the religious notion of "sin" and our enduring commitment to retributive justice. The Supreme Court has called free will a "universal and persistent" foundation for our system of law. Any scientific developments that threatened our notion of free will would seem to put the ethics of punishing people for their bad behaviour in question.In Free Will Harris debates these ideas and asks whether or not, given what brain science is telling us, we actually have free will?

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'An extraordinary book . . . It will shake up your most fundamental beliefs about everyday experience, and it just might change your life.' Paul Bloom___For the millions of people who want spirituality without religion, Sam Harris's new book is a guide to meditation as a rational spiritual practice informed by neuroscience and psychology. Throughout the book, Harris argues that there are important truths to be found in the experience of contemplatives such as Jesus, Buddha and other saints and sages of history-and, therefore, that there is more to understanding reality than science and secular culture generally allow.Waking Up is part seeker's memoir and part exploration of the scientific underpinnings of spirituality. No other book marries contemplative wisdom and modern science in this way, and no author other than Sam Harris-a scientist, philosopher, and famous sceptic-could write it. ___'A demanding, illusion-shattering book.' Kirkus Reviews'A pleasure to read.' Huffington Post

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As it was in Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and Othello, so it is in life. Most forms of private vice and public evil are kindled and sustained by lies. Acts of adultery and other personal betrayals, financial fraud, government corruption--even murder and genocide--generally require an additional moral defect: a willingness to lie. In Lying, best-selling author and neuroscientist Sam Harris argues that we can radically simplify our lives and improve society by merely telling the truth in situations where others often lie. He focuses on "white" lies--those lies we tell for the purpose of sparing people discomfort--for these are the lies that most often tempt us. And they tend to be the only lies that good people tell while imagining that they are being good in the process.

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“A civil but honest dialogue…As illuminating as it is fascinating.”—Ayaan Hirsi AliIs Islam a religion of peace or war? Is it amenable to reform? Why do so many Muslims seem to be drawn to extremism? And what do words like jihadism and fundamentalism really mean? In a world riven by misunderstanding and violence, Sam Harris—a famous atheist—and Maajid Nawaz—a former radical—demonstrate how two people with very different religious views can find common ground and invite you to join in an urgently needed conversation.“How refreshing to read an honest yet affectionate exchange between the Islamist-turned-liberal-Muslim Maajid Nawaz and the neuroscientist who advocates mindful atheism, Sam Harris…Their back-and-forth clarifies multiple confusions that plague the public conversation about Islam.”—Irshad Manji, New York Times Book Review“It is sadly uncommon, in any era, to find dialogue based on facts and reason—but even more rarely are Muslim and non-Muslim intellectuals able to maintain critical distance on broad questions about Islam. Which makes Islam and the Future of Tolerance something of a unicorn…Most conversations about religion are marked by the inability of either side to listen, but here, at last, is a proper debate.”—New Statesman

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_________________Includes a foreword by STEPHEN FRY'A classic for our time...And all time.' - Michael Shermer'The words of Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris and Dennett are needed more than ever. These are the heirs to Voltaire.' - Matt RidleyKnown as the ‘four horsemen’ of New Atheism, these four big thinkers of the twenty-first century met only once. Their electrifying examination of ideas on this remarkable occasion was intense and wide-ranging. Everything that was said as they agreed and disagreed with one another, interrogated ideas and exchanged insights – about religion and atheism, science and sense – speaks with urgency to our present age. Questions they asked of each other included: ‘Is it ever possible to win a war of ideas? Is spirituality the preserve of the religious? Are there any truths you would rather not know? Would you want to see the end of faith?’ The dialogue was recorded, and is now transcribed and presented here with new introductions from the surviving three horsemen. With a sparkling introduction from Stephen Fry, it makes essential reading for all their admirers and for anyone interested in exploring the tensions between faith and reason.

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